Identification of deleted consonants

Area of Science:

• Phonetics and Speech Science
• Auditory Perception
• Acoustic Phonetics

Background:

• Vowel-Consonant (VC) transitions are generally superior to Consonant-Vowel (CV) transitions for identifying deleted consonants.
• The abrupt onset of CV transitions may create a "click sensation," interfering with consonant identification.
• Previous research indicates a performance gap between VC and CV transitions in consonant perception tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effect of eliminating abrupt onsets on the identification of deleted consonants.
• To determine if replacing deleted consonant portions with noise bursts improves the perception of incomplete syllables.
• To re-evaluate the difference between initial and final plosive transitions when abrupt onsets are mitigated.

Main Methods:

• Modified incomplete syllables by replacing the abrupt onset of deleted initial consonants with noise bursts.
• Assessed the impact of this modification on the naturalness of the synthesized speech stimuli.
• Measured the accuracy of identifying deleted initial voiceless plosives in the modified syllables.

Main Results:

• The addition of noise bursts significantly improved the identification accuracy of deleted initial voiceless plosives.
• The modified syllables were perceived as more natural compared to the original incomplete syllables.
• The performance difference between initial and final plosive transitions was nearly eliminated after noise addition.

Conclusions:

• Mitigating abrupt onsets in CV transitions by adding noise is an effective method to enhance consonant perception.
• Noise bursts can improve the intelligibility of speech with deleted initial consonants, making them more natural-sounding.
• The findings suggest that abruptness, not just the transition type, plays a crucial role in consonant identification.